Congressional research and monitoring has seen a major transformation over the
past two decades, a transformation from personal relationships on the Hill and
volumes of printed books to online searching, notification and additional
documents that previously were the most sought after documents in Washington,
DC. The availability of information has been a revolution of access to the
legislature and its process.

A legislative researcher or lobbyist trying to keep track of actions in Congress
in the early 1980s had one resource: the daily (when in session)
Congressional Record.
Everyone in Washington, DC whose job it was to monitor or research Congress had
this publication on his or her desk. It was the only reliable source detailing
everything that happened in Congress the previous day. Today, this publication
is rarely seen on desks in Washington, DC; I have not seen it in print in many
years. It still exists, but technology, Congress, and lobbyists have moved into
new realms.

Replacing the printed Congressional Record took many steps, from simple indexing
of legislation in the late 1970s to delivering “The Record” and full text of
legislation and committee reports online in the 1980s. Prior to this time,
legislative monitoring was exclusively a personal affair, relying on
relationships and a physical presence in the Capitol to retrieve
bill text
and learn of changes and actions.

Online monitoring revolutionized the process not only of following legislation,
but the process of legislating itself, enabling people and organizations either
outside of the grounds of the Capitol or without personal relationships within
it, to follow the activities of Congress. A vast increase in advocacy
organizations, pressing their issues before Congress, has followed. A quick look
at the number and type of organizations lobbying Congress in the 1970s compared
with the same list today would clearly illustrate this point.

As legislative documents were put online, the process relied on a single source,
the Government Printing Office (GPO).
The GPO is Congress’ printer, printing Federal legislation and the Congressional
Record. The first online legislative service, Legi-Slate, located its offices in
Washington, DC right across the street from the GPO to speed the process of
transforming the printed documents into online documents. Other online companies
entered the market, including Congressional
Quarterly.

These official publications had limitations; everyone always had to wait for the
printing of the document by the GPO. Also, not all documents were printed by the
GPO. Online subscribers were happy to have the new features of searching for
words in the text of a bill, regular notification of new materials, even
indexing of items for retrieving even more minute aspects of legislation.
Congress itself added to the movement online with
THOMAS, a web service of
the Library of Congress. This was progress.

Bills were introduced and referred to a Committee, the text often was printed in
the Congressional Record for the next business day, if possible, and a separate
printing of the bill text was available usually a few days later. Committee
reports generally followed the same procedure but a separate printing could be
delayed even longer. A new version of the bill would be printed as each chamber
moved on a piece of legislation. Changes in committee would become evident in
the bill as it passed the chamber. Only these “official” publications were
available to subscribers of online services or to web browsers on Thomas.

From the very beginning, online monitoring of Congress had some glaring
limitations. These were readily admitted at the time, but the real improvement
provided by online monitoring was a major improvement over the personal and
newspaper orientation of the recent past. A sort of online void existed between
the types of materials provided by online sources and other types of materials
that were relevant and essential to the legislative process. The focus for
people who seriously needed to monitor Congress shifted to the types of
materials they always attempted to collect but was either never officially
printed by Congress itself or was delayed in the GPO printing process.

Legi-Slate started to fill some of the holes in legislative monitoring. In the
early 1990s it began sending reporters to every single Markup session. Recording
events and changes to legislation. Some of Legi-Slate’ innovations have been
lost as the result of technology and economics. Detailed subject indexing and a
current update of the US
Code are some of the items no longer provided. Legi-Slate itself was a
victim of the Year 2000 issue and had to close in 1999.

Here is a typical list of documents that were always outside the official
publication realm:

Drafts of bills and
amendments

Letters to and from
administration officials and Members of Congress

Text of
amendments as they pass out of
committee and before they are incorporated into the next version of the
bill.

Press releases (Member,
Senator and Committees)

Staff summaries, reports,
and White Papers from committee staff

The Chairman’s mark, the
bill the chairman of a committee uses as the basis of the bill as it enters a
Markup
Session

Reporting on what happened
in a markup session

Transcripts of testimony,
either prepared or verbatim of Congressional hearings.

GAO, CBO, and CRS Reports,
all of which usually are the result of specific Congressional inquiries and
requests.

News organizations and
reporters have always relied on these types of documents as their primary
sources for their reporting and analysis. Access to these additional materials
now provides the researcher with essentially the reporter’s notebook.
Sophisticated lobbyists have relied on them more than the normal official
printing to monitor their issues. The problem is there was no timely and
reliable source for these items, it was always (and to some extent, still is) a
hit or miss proposition.

Upstart GalleryWatch, an online
service created in 2000 after Legi-Slate’s demise, began its mission of not only
providing the basic official publications but recording bill actions as they
happen and finally beginning to fill-in the online void of additional documents.
These materials could be retrieved and posted online in a timely and effective
fashion. Just as online sources of official Congressional information
transformed Congressional monitoring, the real-time access of additional types
of materials continues this transformation.

Additional documents provide a different perspective on legislation. A bill at
face value in official documents may look like it is languishing in Committee;
it may actually be moving along in other ways. Congressional letters, Agency
reports, Committee analysis, draft amendments, and press releases may signal
life in something the process thinks is stalled.

Adding drafts of bills, Chairman’s marks, and legislative texts of amendments as
they happen has opened up the legislative process even further than the events
of the early 1980s. Letters from members to the administration have become a new
method of marshalling support (or opposition) to issues. The Chairman’s mark,
previously the most closely guarded document on the Hill, is increasingly
available on GalleryWatch.
CBO, GAO,
OMB, and now
CRS reports are also
online. The breadth of information on Congress that has become available over
the past 20 years has radically changed the process from an insider’s exclusive
world to a world available to anyone on the Internet. Researchers, lobbyists,
interest groups and common citizens can now research and monitor the real-time
actions of Congress in ways unfathomable at the beginning of the Internet age.

As savvy researchers now
have access to many iterations of legislative materials as the documents
themselves evolve, the trend is that they are relying less on traditional
publications to interpret events for them and instead are reading the documents
throughout the process to finalization. The result is that professionals
are making their own assessments. Some users are analyzing documents and
assessing the value directly, and are by-passing interpretation and commentary
by the press. Now that researchers have access to more of these traditionally
hard-to-find documents, their ability to make value assessments directly is that
much more prevalent.

Following a bill used to mean your physical presence in the
Capitol. Online access
changed the process but specific information required special access. A bill may
be moving forward and the official documents did provide clues to the fact.
Additional materials from the primary sources now and provide clues to an online
researcher of movement and action on measures previously considered dead. The
revolution of access to Congressional materials continues. As new materials
become readily available new avenues will certainly open. Timeliness of
materials will be enhanced too, today comments made on the floor can be
instantly telegraphed to your email, for example. The revolution of access to
Congressional materials has created real changes in the democratic process and
advantages (and perhaps disadvantages) for our democratic system.